FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD30 → You Are Bactera

You Are Bactera

By w84death

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Coolness352
Innovation1333.80
Graphics2513.62
Mood5962.94
Overall6183.15
Humor6302.22
Audio7202.39
Fun9662.55
Theme10092.46

Comments

hyoga-3d 2014-08-25 13:05

I could not play the game, it did not loaded to me, but the graphics by the pictures got my attention.

falcon11445 2014-08-25 13:06

Little but hard to understand and i am not sure how this connects with the theme

incd021 2014-08-25 13:07

Game of life within game of life... Life-ception. I Like it :)

slooowpoke 2014-08-25 13:08

Great concept! Love the use of a game within a game. Well polished, nice sounds interesting idea. I'm betting this will easily make it into the top 100 ;)
Not too sure how to win, if there is a way but the idea and the idea behind the AI is great and so original. Love it.

zapaman 2014-08-25 13:08

Highest score in inovation I gave during this LD!

riocide 2014-08-25 13:09

Cool little game. Playing is a bit strange, even if you know the ruleset of conways game of life. But it was a nice and novel way of approaching the theme. Well done!

2hitmatt 2014-08-25 13:09

Pretty cool. I feel like there could be quite a deep level of depth here to play if I put more time into it. Very nice :D

punyone 2014-08-25 13:10

Nice graphics - I was missing a gameplay element a bit, but I like simulations and this one was nice to look at :).

pxlcoder 2014-08-25 13:11

This was surprisingly fun!
The graphics suit the gameplay very well.

ptsnoop 2014-08-25 13:11

An intriguing little simulation. Not sure what aim it has, if any (does that make it a toy rather than a game?), but still fun to play around with.

One thing worth saying, though, since it was annoying me - "bacterium" is the singular of "bacteria". One bacterium, two bacteria. Not "a bacteria", not "bacterias". (Sorry for being a pedant!)

dhargan 2014-08-25 13:14

kinda hard to understand to play even if you understand the rules.

tacospice 2014-08-25 13:16

This is really cool.
Quick to pick up and play.
The sounds are simple but fit perfectly.
And the graphics, same there.

Some notes: When placing cells in a brain, I wish the spot I'm pointing at would be highlighted, because sometimes I was sure I'd place a cell in one spot only to have the cell end up next to it instead.

And maybe newly placed cells should be allowed to be removed (consider them 'committed' after one turn/only while paused) in case you misclick or change your mind.

Overall though, 4/5.

zupoman 2014-08-25 13:22

Nice idea, I like it. Could be more interesting though - I think it could use to have some obstacles? Enemies? Because losing all bacteria is kind of impossible.

w84death 2014-08-25 13:31

PTSnoop: thanks for clarification. English is not my main language. I will hotfix the translation.

Steve: you're right! I will add this feature for misclick (after the compo)

Thanks You all for the kind words. I was afraid that no one will understand how this game works :)

hungyg 2014-08-25 13:31

Very interesting concept taking Game of Life to the next level.

ittlebit 2014-08-25 13:41

Interesting game within a game!

chriskdev 2014-08-25 14:03

Nice graphics, but I didn't get how to play it :/

w84death 2014-08-25 14:26

All the people who don know how to play: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life

You MUST known what the Conway's Game of Life is. This is not a causal game for kids, it's casual game for geeks :D

lokiman 2014-08-25 17:39

Nice little "life" simulation. Description fits this game perfectly (casual game for geeks :D

techblogogy 2014-08-25 19:28

Great approach on the theme

arowx 2014-08-25 19:33

Liked it great idea. Do the bacteria next to each other join up in the game of life so the meta picture of bacteria is simply a zoomed out view of the game of life?

uvwar 2014-08-25 19:35

Didn't quite get what I was controlling, and not being able to take away brain points (at least I don't think?) made it hard for me to make desired shapes, but otherwise pretty darn interesting!

robinerd 2014-08-25 19:37

Cool concept with programmable game of life, but I'm sorry, to complicated mechanics for me to enjoy it. Graphics and sound effects are nice though! Also the theme relation seems a bit far-fetched

w84death 2014-08-25 19:40

Arowx: I was thinking of that but don't have enough time. And It would not work because the "brain" part is what moves/kills/borns new bacterias.

But You can think of it as You are the next layer. It all the bacterias dies You will loose. You must take care of them to maintain alive.

phi 2014-08-25 19:41

You already won me when I saw that this game was about Conway's Game of Life. I love watching stuff evolve, and this is quite fun. However, I have some points of criticism:

-The tutorial is good but too long and extensive.
-The play/pause button is inverted, which is mildly irritating.
-Sometimes, it gets stuck or repetitive quite fast.
-The font is not pixelated.
-Reading the title I assume you chose the plural form of "bacterium" on purpose to tell me that I'm not alone, now I'm slightly creeped out.

renatopp 2014-08-25 19:47

It is good idea, not very well connected to the theme though. Good job anyway

w84death 2014-08-25 19:50

phi: Yes the tutorial part was done in the last hours and it's lacking the "skip" button. Well can't change that now.

With the font it's the same story: to little time, I don't have the engine for pixel art text - this is in my to do list for this game engine (it will be used in some other hackathon games)

Overall thanks for criticism. I would like to change all of this after the judging is done.

p.s. Yes, the bacteria is the third layer ( game of life -> bactrium -> player ) as we all have in our bodies thousands of (good nad bad) bacteria. We will die shortly withou them (the good ones for sure).

w84death 2014-08-25 19:52

renatopp: I think it is but that's the "problem" with interpreting art - anyone have their own version.

I was trying to thing out side the box: connecting "worlds" as computer science (cellular automation), biology (bacteria) and the player (play/live as long as he take care of the bacteria).

berail 2014-08-25 20:25

Nice it's like Game of Life simulation :D

tomvert 2014-08-25 20:27

Really awesome idea, I love conway's game of life. I didn't really managed to do anything, but with some work it could make a really interesting game. Amazing job !

sneeuwpopsneeuw 2014-08-25 20:36

a realy nice game based on Conway's Game of Life, I Love Math in games

dragonxvi 2014-08-25 21:42

It's like Game of Life Inception here :p Tricky but interesting idea. Utterly forgot the rules of Game of Life but still managed to produce a good chunk of Bacteria before they all died :p

saintheiser 2014-08-26 01:53

Concept is looking interesting but kinda strange and something weird.

tannernetwork 2014-08-26 12:22

Really good game. Nice graphics. Nice music. Your pixelart is awesome.

clownaround 2014-08-26 22:04

Great idea. Graphics are really good. A little too little interaction, but great concept.

honcho 2014-08-27 08:19

Brilliant game! Really enjoyed watching the evolution of bacteria!

romko_pidstryhach 2014-08-27 12:06

Smart idea!

ripter 2014-08-28 05:30

interesting idea- did not understand how the two scales of action are related. If the goal is infinite survival, one should be able to input a simple methuselah pattern and do well. maybe you could provide stamps for glider shapes and have a demolition derby?

runvs 2014-08-28 08:24

Hi there, nice idea to create a second order game of life! Some background music would have been nice as well as a "one step" function.

43iscoding 2014-08-28 14:26

Very interesting idea!

zkenshin 2014-08-31 02:14

Very neat that you turned the game of life into more of a real game. :P Nice entry. :)

dsalles 2014-09-01 05:50

Mesmerizing. Not entirely sure what is happening but enjoyed it anyway.

twintrite 2014-09-01 13:28

Not my type of game but a cool idea and nice style.

swistakm 2014-09-01 21:11

Very innovative game. For geeks indeed.
I found a gamebreaker:
http://i.imgur.com/xYwcrSm.png

grayhaze 2014-09-02 11:25

Interesting game that could do with a slightly deeper tutorial to tell you how to get the bacteria to move without needing to read up on a subject on Wikipedia. Seems like it could be a fun little casual game for mobiles.

vividhelix 2014-09-07 06:37

Great great great idea! I love all things with a life of their own, great how you took the game of life and made it work like this!

mechabit 2014-09-07 15:35

nice game within a game theme. could have done with more gamey mechanics like rival bacteria or target to reach like some animal's throat cells, maybe enemy white blood cells. Maybe some evolution upgrades like bigger game of life play area.

moosefly 2014-09-11 18:45

Cool implementation of the theme, makes for a nice toy to pass the time with! The game froze for me after playing for a while though, don't know what caused it as I wasn't doing anything special.

Anssi@MooseflyGames